


the world is ours to take

by theevilcleavage



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-08-30 23:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8554750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theevilcleavage/pseuds/theevilcleavage
Summary: The squad saves the world a few more times, and Harley learns that love and pain don't always come hand in hand.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It is honestly a travesty that Ivy wasn't in the Suicide Squad movie. If she isn't in the Birds of Prey movie, I will riot.

The second time Harley is released from her cell, the guards don’t bother implanting a chip. 

Waller has called on the squad to go after a group of baddies on the east side of Gotham City, and apparently the chips are a safety hazard this time around. Harley doesn’t really pay attention during the briefing – Colonel Flag is a really boring guy – but basically it’s gonna be dangerous and they’re probably all gonna die.

She thinks that sounds a lot like the squad’s first assignment, minus the trippy magic stuff, and she thinks the government needs to start getting a bit more creative if it wants this whole X Squad thing to work out. 

Flag says they’ll all be dropped off at the center of the city in the morning, once Waller’s informants have gathered enough information on the threat they’re dealing with. The squad needs to hit the enemy at its source, and right now nobody seems to have any clue what that is. 

It’s really just another suicide mission, though, and although she’s got ties with the team, Harley would rather spend her last night alive doing something fun. Which is why she swipes the pass-key off a guard during the mission briefing, so skillfully that only Deadshot picks up on it, and uses it to escape the compound later that night. 

Harley heads into Gotham and sticks to the west side of the city, avoiding the chaos that’s probably already unfolding. She’s heard of a gallery that’s supposed to have a really expensive ruby on display, and her plan is to break in and steal it. Harley doesn’t really wear a lot of jewelry, but she likes big, shiny things and that’s reason enough for a heist.

But karma ends up being a total bitch, because the alarm goes off before she even gets to the right floor. She has to hide in one of the display rooms while security runs around looking for the intruder. She’s about ready to skedaddle when some lady carrying a plant rushes past her, searching for the nearest exit.

The woman looks kind of familiar, like Harley’s seen her on the news or in a movie or something. She’s got red hair and green skin that only looks off in direct light. 

“Hey, I know you,” Harley says, her face scrunched up in thought. “Ain’t you Poison Ivy? The plant lady?”

The woman seems startled by her presence, but Harley just smiles and waves to show her she’s not a threat. The woman relaxes a bit, but her suspicious gaze lingers on Harley.

“Who are you?”

“Harley Quinn,” she says, tacking on a cute wink. “Pleased ta meetcha. I’m guessin’ that alarm was all you, huh?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Hey, stop!”

One of the cops searching the building has caught sight of them. He’s about to give some signal to his buddies when Ivy rushes forward and pulls him into a kiss, halting his speech. After a long moment the cop pulls back from the kiss and looks at Ivy with the dumbest, dopiest smile on his face. 

“Now,” Ivy says, in a low, lilting voice. “Be a good boy and go tell your friends we aren’t here.”

The cop nods and turns right around, dazed but determined to follow Ivy’s orders. The second he’s out of sight, Harley grabs Ivy’s arm, barely able to contain her excitement. 

“Neat trick!” she squeals, grinning widely. “You gotta teach me.”

Ivy smiles a bit, like she knows something Harley doesn’t, and she starts leading her toward one of the emergency exits. 

“Come on,” she says, her fingers closing around Harley’s wrist. “We can hide out at my place until the coast is clear.”

* * * * *

“Ow, ow, ow!”

It’s just a quick prick, but Harley hates needles and even with Ivy batting her eyelashes all pretty and trying to distract her, it’s hard not to squirm in her chair.

“Sorry,” Ivy says, setting aside the syringe. “A necessary evil, I’m afraid.” 

Right. A necessary evil. Because Ivy’s DNA is all weird and plant-y. 

“So, how does it work?” Harley asks, rubbing at her arm and shifting closer to Ivy on the couch. “Ya know, with the whole brainwashin’ thing. Can ya use it on anyone?”

“I can only use my pheremones on men,” Ivy tells her. “Women are immune to my…charms.”

“You should try that trick on the Bat,” Harley suggests, giddy at the thought of Gotham’s brooding Dark Knight following Ivy around like a desperate puppy. “That’d be a hoot!”

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” Ivy says, the corner of her lips quirking upward. “But that rodent has a knack for ruining my plans.”

“Yeah,” Harley laments. “It’s like that with my puddin’, too. Mistah Jay’s always one step behind ol’ Batsy. But don’ tell him I said so!”

“Mister Jay,” Ivy repeats, her brow furrowed. “Wait, you…you’re Joker’s girl?”

“That’s me!” Harley chirps, bouncing a bit in her seat. “We go way back.”

Ivy doesn’t seem thrilled to hear that. 

“So I’ve heard.”

There’s a rustling over by the bookcase, and Harley spies a small, furry plant shuffling around on the top shelf. Many of the other plants in Ivy’s livingroom have begun to rustle as well, feeding off of Ivy’s displeasure. Harley rushes to change the topic. 

“Hey, so what’s your story?” she asks. “Were you just born looking all plant-y or…?”

A few of Ivy’s vines have slithered across the floor to curl lovingly around her legs. Ivy strokes them absently, like she’s brushing back the fur of a pet. 

“No,” she says, glancing down at her green-tinted skin. “I wasn’t.” 

* * * * *

It turns out Poison Ivy’s backstory is kinda long and kinda messed up. Some guy named Jason experimented on her a few years ago, turned her into some sort of plant-human hybrid, and that’s where all her nifty powers come from. 

Ivy doesn’t ask about Harley’s past (everyone knows how she and the Joker started out), but she gets Harley talking about other stuff, like where she grew up and how many banks she’s robbed, and she’s such a good listener that Harley ends up spilling the beans about the squad. 

She tells Ivy all about the squad’s new assignment, even though that’s technically classified or whatever, and Ivy really seems interested in what she has to say. She nods and asks questions at the right moments, and it seems like the louder and crazier Harley gets with her storytelling, the more Ivy smiles at her.

By the time the squad tries to contact her, it’s been at least a few hours. They try her phone twice, and it takes Harley a while to realize that it’s buzzing, since she’s so wrapped up in her own rambling and in the deep, dark red of Ivy’s lips. 

After a few rings, Harley pulls her phone out of the back pocket of her shorts and presses it to her ear. 

“Hiya! Who’s callin’?”

“Harley, where you at?” Deadshot’s voice comes through the phone loud and clear, accompanied by some soft static. “Waller wants you back at the base stat.”

“But I’m havin’ fun,” Harley whines, her lips pulling together in a soft pout. “How come we never get ta take a night off?”

Deadshot sighs, and he must hand the phone to someone else because she hears a whole lot of shuffling on the other end. Finally Rick Flag’s voice comes sounding through the speaker.

“Stop screwing around, Quinn,” he says, in that boring, no-nonsense military voice. “Don’t make me send Katana after you.”

“Aw, you’re no fun!” Harley complains, but she’s already rising to her feet, ready to head out. 

“Oh, and Harley?” It’s Deadshot again. “Be careful.”

She smiles into her phone.

“See ya, Floyd.”

“Don’t call me that,” he says, and then the line goes dead.

“Going somewhere?” Ivy asks. She’s watching Harley with a small, secret smile, and for a second she looks every bit the seductress that the newscasters make her out to be. And Harley suddenly feels kind of shy.

“Oh, ya know, jus’…headin’ out ta save the world. No biggie.”

Ivy nods and moves off the couch, approaching her with slow, purposeful steps. Once she’s standing in front of Harley, she leans in close, until their faces are only inches apart, and whispers, 

“Then I guess I’ll see you around, Harley-girl.”

There’s a quiet beat where Ivy’s bright green eyes fix on Harley’s lips, lingering just long enough for a shiver to pass through her body. Ivy reaches forward to brush her thumb along Harley’s jaw, and when Harley’s eyes flutter closed in anticipation, Ivy closes the space between them to press a soft, chaste kiss to her cheek. 

Before Harley can even process what’s just happened, Ivy is pulling away, leaving faint traces of her lipstick behind. 

“I’ll be seeing you,” Ivy says.

“Yeah,” Harley replies, her heart pounding. “Yeah, I’ll see ya.”

* * * * *

Harley returns to the base dragging her signature sledgehammer behind her. 

Flag doesn’t look too amused.

“We’ve got a mission to complete,” he says, fixing her with an unnecessarily harsh glare. “Run off again, I’ll shoot you down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbles, rolling her eyes as she brushes past him. “Save the lecture fer someone who cares, buddy.”

Flag takes a deep breath, probably so he doesn’t lose his cool and kill them all, and then starts leading them over to the weapons unit. Harley waits for most of the others to follow after him before she falls in line. Deadshot and Boomerang hang back with her. 

“You, uh,” Boomerang gestures to her cheek. “You got a little somethin’ right there.”

Harley touches her cheek, and when her fingers end up smudged with the remnants of Ivy’s lipstick, she struggles to hide her smile.

“I met someone,” she says, with a forced casualness that absolutely nobody is buying. “Not that it’s any of yer business.”

Boomerang raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t press her for details. Instead he opts to slink up behind Katana and try out another few lines on her that may or may not get him stabbed.

“Joker won’t like it,” Deadshot says, once he’s sure Boomerang won’t overhear them. He’s always looking out for her, anticipating things long before they happen. But Harley is more of a go-with-the-flow kind of girl.

“Don’ worry so much,” she says, nudging him lightly. “What he don’ know can’t hurt ‘im.” 

* * * * *

The big threat ends up being an army of robot drones, which is as unoriginal as it is a giant pain in the ass. 

The squad is making good progress, working their way toward the crazy scientist at the center of the chaos. Harley’s doing pretty well at first, striking down drones left and right, but then their numbers start increasing and the squad loses its competitive edge. 

That’s when Harley is rescued by the vines. 

It makes no sense, because Ivy isn’t exactly there to command them, but they protect her at least twice from fatal blows to the head and pull her back when the danger becomes too intense. Harley wonders at their origins the whole time, but there really isn’t time to dwell on that when a whole army of cyborgs are heading her way.

When the building directly in front of her comes crashing down, the vines reach out to rescue her. But Croc barrels in and beats them to it, carrying her to safety and gently lowering her to the ground behind an old, brick tenement. 

Harley flashes him a winning smile.

“Thanks, big guy. Owe ya one.”

Just over Croc’s shoulder, she catches the last of the vines creeping back underneath the concrete, leaving her to continue the fight on her own. 

* * * * *

They win in the end, but just barely. 

Waller is as unimpressed as ever, but she thanks them without prompting this time, so Harley figures they’re at least making some degree of progress with her. 

“Any requests this time?” she asks. Deadshot immediately steps forward, ready with a list of demands for his daughter, but Harley just shrugs. 

The Joker will break out of Arkham soon, and when he does he’ll come for her. 

Until then, she’s happy to catch some Zs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leto's Joker is a lot different from some of the previous Jokers we've seen (and perhaps preferred). I tried to get his voice right, while still maintaining the essence of the Joker, so I hope it came out okay. 
> 
> Happy reading, guys! Let me know if this is all coming along okay in the comments. :)

Her third week out of Belle Reve, Harley tries to do something nice for the Joker. 

He really put out all the stops to spring her from prison again – stole a couple helicopters and everything – and she wants to return the favor with a grand gesture of her own. And since her guy doesn’t care much for material possessions, Harley figures the only way to put a smile on his face is to hand over the Bat himself. 

So she does. 

She spends a few days outlining a plan and calling on a few of Joker’s boys to help her out. It’s really just a simple bait and capture: Harley kidnaps a couple of hostages off the streets (nothing too showy), and waits for the Bat to fly in all heroic and everything, and fall right into her trap. 

In the end, the plan works like a charm. Batman shows up on the roof of a five-story building in downtown Gotham, just in time for a few canisters to explode around him, releasing the Joker’s signature laughing gas. 

Batman is only incapacitated for a minute or so, but that’s all the time Harley needs to tie him up and dangle him over the side of the roof. Once the gas wears off, he starts struggling against the restraints, and Harley lets a few of the boys wail on him for a while until he passes out. 

It’s smooth sailing from that point on, and Harley is practically buzzing with excitement by the time Joker shows up. The moment she sees him, she rushes over and throws her arms around his neck, pulling him into a passionate kiss. He makes a low growling sound, his fingers digging into her waist as he tugs her closer to him. 

“I gotcha somethin’,” she tells him, unable to hide her smile. “Y’wanna see?”

Harley takes his hand and leads him over to the present she just gift-wrapped in tight, knotted ropes. 

“Tada!” 

Joker blinks a few times, his brow furrowed. 

“Batman…”

“Yup!” Harley grins as she pulls a knife from her boot and offers it up. “Y’wanna do the honors?”

Joker doesn’t respond right away, not like she expects him to. For a while he just stands really still, his nostrils flaring as he takes in the half-conscious Batman laid out in front of him. Finally he turns to face her. 

“So thoughtful…” he drawls, and Harley just knows he’s about to break out in hysterical laughter and thank her with a big, wet kiss. But instead, to her great surprise, he releases a low growl and backhands her across the face. One of his rings slashes her cheek, leaving a small trail of blood behind. 

Before she has any time to process what’s happened, Joker’s hand clamps tightly around her throat. 

“You think I need your help, hm?” he hisses, his eyes flashing dangerously. “You think I can’t defeat Batman on my own?”

“N-no!” she chokes out, rapidly shaking her head. “No, I was just tryna-”

“Trying to humiliate me?” he grits out, his grip tightening. Harley gasps for air, desperately attempting to pry his fingers from her throat. His expression softens as he watches her struggle against him.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he murmurs. He releases her, stepping back to rake his hands through his hair. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when they open again, they’re shining with a familiar, mischevious glint. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Whatcha gonna do?” Harley rasps, staring back at him defiantly. “Y’gonna kill me, Mistah Jay?”

His mouth curves into a wide, metal grin.

“No, no…I’m not gonna kill ya. I’m just gonna teach ya a lesson.”

He reaches forward to grip her shoulders and forces her back a few steps. She stumbles, resisting right up until she’s standing at the edge of the roof, her heels hovering over thin air. 

“Wait, wait, wait! Puddin’, look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m real sorry! I didn’ mean -”

“Shh…” He leans in, pressing a finger to her lips. “Be good for Daddy,” he says.

And then he shoves her off of the roof.

* * * * *

Harley lies there, sprawled out on the hard, gray sidewalk, for a long, long time. 

The pain is awful, at first. Her lungs burn and her limbs ache and dark, thick blood dribbles from her mouth onto the concrete. But the pain fades into the background for her as she replays her conversation with the Joker in her mind, trying to imagine a different ending than the one she got. An ending where he thanked her and held her and threw Batman off the roof instead.

By the time any help shows up, Harley is drifting in and out of consciousness, the world around her growing fuzzy. Somebody must call an ambulance, because Harley can hear that sharp, familiar wailing in the distance, growing closer by the second. She mumbles short, nonsensical sentences to herself as the paramedics pull up, jumping out of the back of their vehicle. They move quickly, lifting her onto a gurney and loading her into the back of the ambulance. One of the paramedics holds her hand during the drive to the hospital, while another places a mask over her nose and mouth to help her breathe. 

Harley blacks out before they ever reach the hospital, and comes to with a nurse hovering over her, shining a light directly into her left eye. Harley squints against the intrusion and tries to bat the woman’s arm away. 

There are two cops standing nearby, shuffling uneasily. One of the officers clears his throat.

“Gordon wants to know when we can ship her back to holding.” 

The nurse injects something into Harley’s IV. The drug takes a moment to enter her system, but it works fast, and soon Harley is feeling remarkably drowsy. 

“At least a few days,” the doctor says. “But she’ll be in a wheelchair for at least a month.”

The officer raises an eyebrow.

“Wow. Lucky kid,” he says. “A fall like that shoulda killed her.”

Harley closes her eyes and tries not to wish that it had.

* * * * *

Her doctor is right about the wheelchair. Harley’s stuck in one for her first few weeks back at Belle Reve, and it’s absolutely awful. Not the chair, really, but the way people treat her when she’s in it. 

The guards have been acting really weird around her. They won’t respond to any of her taunts, and they studiously ignore all of her flirting. Harley’s tried over and over to goad them into losing their cool, into using the electric charge on the bars of her cell to shake things up a bit, but they never rise to the bait. They don’t even react after she draws an assortment of crude pictures all over her casts and presents them to the guards with a big grin. 

Of course, it’s not all about the wheelchair, and Harley gets that. The more visible injuries are really what freak everybody out. The guards take one look at her battered face and suddenly she isn’t Harley Quinn anymore. She’s just someone weak and defenseless who got beaten down by the big bad Joker, just like any other victim. 

Harley hates it, hates that stupid role they’ve created for her. Because Harley Quinn isn’t a victim, not by a long shot, and she doesn’t need their pity. 

It’s really a huge relief once she ditches the chair and the casts finally come off. Eventually the guards start rolling their eyes at her jokes again, and telling her just how crazy they think she is, and one of them even electric shocks her when she reaches outside the bars to grab his throat. 

Things go back to normal after that – or, as normal as living behind bars can get – and with her body all healed up, she starts going through her usual gymnastics routines again. She pulls herself up and stretches out her arms and legs, and tries very hard not to think about the man who landed her back in Belle Reve in the first place. 

She’s mostly unsuccessful, though. Turns out it isn’t so easy to turn off her feelings, or to stop hearing his voice all around her. He’s in her head – he’ll always be – charming her, influencing her thoughts until she starts to really miss him.

It’s such a sick game they play, where he has all the power (even in her mind) and there’s no real way to win. And yet, Harley can never quite bring herself to stop playing.

* * * * *

Four months into Harley’s stay at Belle Reve, the squad is called in for another impossible assignment. 

They’re all herded into a large training room by six or seven guards, and each rogue gets a pile of old clothes to change into, as per usual. Harley rifles through her own belongings and pulls out an old pair of fishnets and a choker necklace. She stares down at that gold choker for a long time, the one that says “PUDDIN’” in big block letters, and tries not to feel guilty when she ultimately tosses it aside. 

Deadshot is standing a few feet from Harley, affixing one of his shooting gadgets to his costume. 

“You doin’ good?” she asks. He nods.

“Yeah. You?”

“Better now that I ain’t locked up.”

A door opens and both of them turn to watch Waller enter the room, flanked by several armed guards. She doesn’t smile, just surveys the room for a second, her eyes narrowed. 

“Listen up,” Waller calls out, waiting until there is absolute silence before she continues. “Your mission this time is to take out one of the lead scientists at Lyte Corp.”

She holds up a picture of a smiling, middle-aged man with thick-rimmed glasses. 

“This is Dr. Arnold Fletcher. He’s been developing a drug that can mutate the human form. Dr. Fletcher’s goal is to create a superhuman hybrid capable of defeating our strongest allies. Your mission is to take him out and destroy any samples of the drug. You will-”

“Wait, ya just want us ta kill one guy?” Harley cuts in incredulously. “Can’tcha just, like, get the police ta do it?”

“No,” Waller says sharply. “It’s too risky.”

“How come?”

“Because,” she snaps, growing tired of Harley’s interruptions. “Dr. Fletcher recently began injecting the drug he created into his own bloodstream. His superhuman abilities are thus far unknown, so there’s no telling what you’ll be up against. So far three of the doctor’s colleagues have been found dead. Cause of death was exposure to a poisonous toxin that had traces of Fletcher’s DNA-”

“So the guy’s poisonous?” Boomerang cuts in. “How are we supposed to kill ‘im and get the drug if we can’t get anywhere near ‘im?” 

“Good question,” Waller says flatly. “Figure it out.”

* * * * *

The helicopter ride is long and bumpy, and Flag lectures them on protocol for nearly half an hour.

Croc doesn’t throw up this time, though, so that’s a definite step up from the last mission.

“We’re all gonna die,” Boomerang says, just before they reach their dropping point. “There’s no way ‘round it. My weapons don’t do nothin’ against poison.”

“Aw, don’ worry so much,” Harley says, trying to be reassuring. And right then she’s struck by a totally brilliant idea. “I think I got a friend who can help us out.”

* * * * *

Flag doesn’t take a lot of convincing, but that’s mostly because Deadshot asks him really nicely and they’ve got some kind of weird bromance going on. And probably also because Flag has no clue how to defeat Fletcher and he’s just super relieved to have a plan. Even a plan that seems a little risky.

“Wait!” Flag hisses, gripping Harley’s arm way tighter than necessary. “You sure this is a good idea?”

Harley wrenches her arm away and plasters on a smile. 

“Positive.”

She raps twice on the door in front of her, and then steps back to wait with the rest of the squad. Everybody is silent for a few long moments, right up until the door swings open to reveal a familiar green face. 

“Hey Red,” Harley manages, waving slightly. “Remember me?”

She’s relieved when Ivy’s lips curve upward in a slow, pleased smile.

“Harley,” she says, and her voice is all low and smooth, just like Harley remembers it. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” Harley agrees, and for a moment, as she smiles back at Ivy, she forgets the mission and the squad altogether. “Yeah, I guess it has.”


End file.
